Yosemite Native American Indian history, Hetch Hetchy Indian history, Mono Lake Paiute History

There is an art form called Western or Cowboy poetry done by poets. This poem was done in the early 1900s by early settlers in California,

There was a western history periodical called The Pony Express which was published out of Sonora, California in Tuolumne County. The periodical has many great historical accounts from testimony of early pioneers and first families who settled in the Central California area.

The Pony Express is a rare find for any persons wanting to know the early history of California in the Central Valley and the high Sierra Nevada.

The Pony Express not only had articles and historical accounts in almost every periodical the The Pony Express had one poem about the history of the area. The poems were done in the classic style of Cowboy Poetry which is popular in the West.

Here is one that is of interest to the Paiute people which was sent to me. The person said it was done in the late 1940s. Once again because the people working at The Pony Express were historians they knew that the Paiutes were the original indigenous people of the beautiful Yosemite Valley.

This poem in the Pony Express was a tribute to James Savage, who by the way was not a hero to the Yosemite Paiute people.

Here is the poem written out;

A FRONTIER CLAMPER MAN

Jim Savage was a frontier man,
Pioneer, trapper, guide.
With pretty squaws, it was his plan
To take’em for a bride.

To them old Jim was always true;
Faithful as starts above.
He never fell for eyes of blue,
Just amber inspired his love.

In sundry mines he made his sou,
Then walked the Moke Hill trail.
In Clamper style he wore the blue
Where Zumwalt gathered kail.

When Diggers dug their precious gold
They traded it for grog.
Hardware and whiskey Savage sold
For prices “on the hog.”

Warwhooped Yosemite’s Piute brave
In havoc ‘cross the land,
Came Mariposa’s boys to save
The law and order stand.

Yea, trading posts Jim ran galore,
Throughout the Southern mines,
Where Indians, with high grade ore,
Traded for Savage lines.

Alas, a knave of Harvey brand,
(Ignoble was his aim)
Layed poor Jim low in Tulare land.
There ended all his fame.

W.F.S.

“Pitue brave” is a referrence to Paiutes. Paiutes have been written as Piute, Pah-ute, Pi-ute, Pitues, and other ways. But the poem still states that the Yosemite Indians were Paiutes.

The poem about James Savage, refered to as Jim, talks about Savage’s Indian wives for the western side, which it was written he had about a dozen ranging from all ages starting from around nine years old.

In the poem it states that James (Jim) Savage spoke many Native Californian langauges of the tribes on the western side, meaning that he spoke Miwok and probably Yokut.

Also the poem states that the Diggers (Indians from the western side) dug Savage’s gold and made him well-off. Savage also built a trading post. That the Yosemite Paiutes caused “trouble” to the miners and Savage’s trading post, which the western tribes used to bring in gold to trade with him. Also the the Mariposa Battalion led by James Savage took care of the gold miners problem by ‘subduing’ the Yosemite Paiutes.

Finally the poem ends with the death of James Savage at the hands of a man named Harvey who shot and killed Savage in the Central Valley.

What is very cool is that this small poem found in The Pony Express tells many aspects of the legend of James Savage and the true identity of the Yosemite American Indians.

Left; Dr. Lafayette H. Bunnell who met Chief Tenaya and the Ahwahneechees and wrote they were Paiutes and Monos. Bunnell wrote that Paiutes also hid in Hetch Hetchy. Right: Lady Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming wrote on her visit to Yosemite that Paiutes used Hetch Hetchy as a sanctuary and to gather acorns. Below: Hetch Hetchy Valley before it was flooded. Hetch Hetchy Valley was a refuge for Paiutes.

Around 2:30 in the morning on March 26th 1872 the famous naturalist John Muir was awaken in his Yosemite cabin by a tremendous rumbling. Muir wrote;

“The shocks were so violent and varied, and succeeded one another so closely, that I had to balance myself carefully in walking as if on the deck of a ship among waves, and it seemed impossible that the high cliffs of the Valley could escape being shattered. In particular, I feared that the sheer-fronted Sentinel Rock, towering above my cabin, would be shaken down, and I took shelter back of a large yellow pine, hoping that it might protect me from at least the smaller out bounding boulders.”

Muir had felt one of the largest earthquakes in California history. The seismic event happened along the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada and leveled almost every building in the small town of Lone Pine and surrounding towns. Twenty seven residents died as buildings collapsed on them. Many of those were Mexican residents. Mexicans of the area built their houses of adobe which crumbled and collapsed killing the residents. The earthquake and after shocks were felt all through out Nevada and California. It was one of the most powerful earthquakes in California.

One item that went mainly unnoticed as a result of the 1872 earthquake was recorded in early Sierra Nevada California newspapers. After the earthquake around 500 Paiutes and Shoshones were seen in the Hetch Hetchy Valley.

The local population of Mariposa and Tuolumne were extremely nervous because there had been recent fights between the white military and the Paiute people and some of the settlers were frightened that many Paiutes meant trouble. The Paiutes were just following a pattern. Hetch Hetchy Valley had been recorded earlier as a safe haven and hiding place for Paiutes.

In 1888 Lady Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming wrote about her visit to Hetch Hetchy in her book “Granite Crags of California”, page 269;

“…but their chief anxiety was to visit a beautiful valley of the same character as this, called the Hetch-Hetchy Valley. It has only recently been discovered, having been one of the sanctuaries of the Pah-ute [Paiute] Indians, who reckon on always finding there an abundant acorn-harvest.”

A sanctuary for the Paiute people recorded by Dr. Lafayette H. Bunnell in his book “The Discovery of the Yosemite, and the Indian war of 1851, which led to that event”, page 231;

“…drawing us into the canyons of the Tuolumne [ed. Hetch Hetchy], where were some Pai-utes [Paiutes] wintering in a valley like Ah-wah-ne [Ahwahnee]”.

When the 1872 Lone Pine earthquake hit the Paiutes ran to a place that had always been a sanctuary and a safe haven for them, and that place was Hetch Hetchy Valley.

Artist rendering of Tabuce or Maggie “Taboose” Howard, Yosemite-Mono Lake Paiute in Yosemite Valley with a wono basket and winnowing tray. These baskets were often used to pick pine nuts and winnow them. The drawing was done by Yosemite-Mono Lake Paiute Roger Salas. The picture on the right is of a Pinon tree taken in Hetch Hetchy Valley in 1937. The tree is very large and hundreds of years old.

There has been talk about the original Native Americans of Hetch Hetchy Valley. Some claim Paiutes were never in the valley, but the discovery of Pinon or Pinenut trees shows that Paiutes were in Hetch Hetchy Valley hundreds of years before whites entered the area.

According to Jan. 1937 Yosemite Nature Notes Pinon trees were found right around Hetch Hetchy Valley, where we knew our Paiute families camped and stayed.

Early hikers, park officials and Park geologists find Pinon trees in the area of Hetch Hetchy Valley in northern Yosemite and it was documented in early reports. Part of the this story was published in the Yosemite Nature Notes in January 1937. The story was about how a Sierra Club party discovered a Single-leaf or Pinon Pine in Yosemite National Park’s Hetch Hetchy Valley. Then as more people traveled into the location they discovered more Pinon trees. This tree is found mainly on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada and the nut of the tree, or pinenut, is a food staple of the Paiute Native people.

In the article published by Yosemite Nature Notes it discusses finding Pinon trees on the California western slope of the Sierra Nevada around Hetch Hetchy Valley.

“In 1909, Mr. H. W. Gleason, with the Sierra Club party, discovered the first-known occurrence of the Single-leaf or Pinon Pine (Pinus monophylia, Torrey or Fremont) in Yosemite National Park. Jepson in his “Trees of California” issued December 15, 1909, says, “On the west slope of the Sierra Nevada it occurs in a few circumscribed localities, in Piute Canyon, near Pate Valley (Grand Canyon of the Tuolumne River), Kings River, along the west wall of the Kern Canyon, and southward into the lower Kern country.” Harvey M. Hall recorded in “A Yosemite Flora,” 1932, that the specimen found by Mr. Gleason was at about 5500 feet altitude in the Piute Creek Gorge. This single tree has been noted several times since by park officers. It is supposed to have been accidentally planted by Paiute Indians enroute from Mono Lake country to Pate Valley, a favorite summer camp.

During the late summer of 1935, Junior Forester Elliott Sawyer found a second lone specimen near the Rancheria Trail on the lower western slope of Rancheria Mountain. This find was recorded by Park Forester Emil Ernst in Yosemite Nature Notes for February, 1936. This tree is also on a possible route of the Paiutes entering Hetch Hetchy Valley. Now a third locality is established in the Park.
On September 14, 1936, while on a field trip with Mr. F. E. Matthes, Senior Geologist of the U.S. Geological Survey, from base camp in Tiltill Valley, I discovered a small Single-leaf Pine tree at 5800 feet altitude, 150 yards south of Tiltill Valley Trail at the point where the up-trail from Hetch Hetchy reaches top of the ridge and makes a slight dip. We were once aware of the presence of a number of trees of this species so made a survey, finding there were between 100 and 200, varying in altitude from 5800 to 6100 feet, spread over an area of some two acres.”

An orchard of Pinon trees where found at that location around Hetch Hetchy. They were old and young and of different heights, some being very large. The trees were found on a series of broad, granite shelves which had a marvelous view-point over looking the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. One of the biggest Pinon trees found in 1936 had a trunk diameter of 28 inches.

The article goes on:

“Where these trees planted by the Indians? Mr. Matthes and I noted a ducked trail out across these natural shelves to “Pinon Point” (which they named after the trees) and on up the ridge. We followed these markers EASTERLY around a high dome, and were led into the upper end of Tiltill Valley. I consulted Mr. Gabriel Sovulewski for many years Supervisor of Road and Trail construction in Yosemite, and he said he had tentatively laid out this route following an old Indian trail, but had later abandoned it for the more direct, present Tiltill Valley Trail location.

Tabuce (Maggie “Taboose” Howard), an old Paiute resident of Yosemite, told me that as a little girl she had gone several times from Mono Lake to camp for the summer with her family in Hetch Hetchy. She said they first went to Bridgeport, and her description of the route seemed to indicate they entered Tiltill Valley, where there are many mortar holes in granite, indicating villages, and then on to Hetch Hetchy, evidently by this old trail. She said children ate pine nuts as they walked along and “maybe lots of times drop’em.” So perhaps a Paiute child several HUNDREDS YEARS AGO started this “orchard” of Single-leaf Pines. It would take TWO or THREE HUNDRED YEARS for one of these slow-growing pines to reach a diameter of 28 inches.” (See Photo 1 in Gallery of Taboose and a 1937 photo of a Pinon tree around Hetch Hetchy)

So if you are ever hiking around Hetch Hetchy and run into the Single-Leaf Pinon trees remember they were once left there hundreds of years ago by Paiutes who camped in Hetch Hetchy Valley.

The Park now avoids mentioning Paiute presence in Hetch Hetchy, or limiting their presence in the Valley. Yet not once did the early Yosemite Nature Notes mention Miwoks in Hetch Hetchy Valley, only Paiutes.

The Pinon tree only grews on the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada and is a staple of the Paiute diet. Even Taboose Howard talks about traveling into Hetch Hetchy NOT to trade, but to live. The pinon trees have been there for hundreds of years.

Old photo of Paiute girls cleaning and preparing pine nuts gathered from Pinon trees which are located mainly in the Great Basin.

In Yosemite there was a yellow pine that was one of the largest trees that towered over the rest. Many old timers remember the tree which was located a mile west of the Old Village and almost in the shade of Sentinel Rock. Around 1951 snow removal crews found the large yellow pine lying across the path to Yellow Pine Beach, which was named after the tree. The massive tree finally fell and no one was around to see it happen.

But that is not all of the story. In the August 1952 Yosemite Nature Notes story it mentioned how one Paiute man loved that tree and his name was Bridgeport Tom. Here is an excerpt of the tie between him and the old yellow pine:

“But there is more of interest to this tree than its unusual size and length. It is Bridgeport Tom’s tree that has at last fallen, and in this fact alone there is a story to tell which should awaken the memories of the old timers of the valley. A young Paiute Indian surnamed Tom, skilled in breaking and training horses in his early days in the valley when he worked for Coffman and Kenny on a settlement near the present Ahwahnee Hotel. In the off-season periods he operated a horse ranch near Mono Lake, where he raised and trained horses. Bridgeport Tom was famous in his younger days as an enthusiastic horseman who entered many racing events held on holiday occasions in this area. In his later years he is described by his daughter, Lucy Telles, as “not a medicine man” but a man who could “heal through the spirit.” His connection with the great old yellow pine came about when he declared it his favorite tree in the valley and prophesied that he would die when it died.

No one knew the exact age of Bridgeport Tom when death claimed him on November 24, 1935, at Coleville, California. He had been in evidence in Bridgeport and in Yosemite for at least 80 years. As for his favorite tree, it is far more difficult to write a death certificate indicating the moment of death for a tree than for a man, but we do know that the big pine did die fairly close in the time to Old Tom.”

The old yellow pine and Paiute Bridgeport Tom will always be a part of Yosemite National Park’s history. Bridgeport Tom, a Paiute man who loved that old yellow tree, would travel back and forth from Coleville, Mono Lake and Yosemite. Bridgeport Tom never lived around western Mariposa County. He resided in the Paiute areas and traveled the old ancestral Mono Paiute trails that Chief Tenaya and the Ahwahneechees did.

The lives of the Yosemite-Mono Lake Paiute and the large famous old yellow pine were intertwined and this article is to honor the memory of these two.

Note: Bridgeport Tom was the father of many of the famous Yosemite – Mono Lake California Paiute basket makers. Coleville, Bridgeport and Mono Lake are Paiute areas, like Yosemite Valley.

Paiute Yosemite story – Fresno Bee article and responses.

Fresno Bee does an article about compliants Paiutes have about Yosemite National Park Service working with and helping their current and former Indian employees, the Southern Sierra Miwuks aka the American Indian Council of Mariposa.From the Fresno Bee:

The Chairman of the Yosemite-Mono Lake Paiutes thought the article was OK because it brought into the light that Yosemite NPS is possibly helping their fellow Indian employees and friends at the Park in their quest for federal recognition. In his opinion any news about Paiutes re-claiming their rightful place in history is better than no news.

Other Paiutes were not so happy and here are their responses to the Fresno Bee article in comments to the story;

The signs in the photos are incorret. They show photos of Paiutes and Yokuts, but claim they are Miwok or Miwok/Paiute. That is what upsets many of the Paiute people. Kathleen Hull states that Tenaya’s father was a Miwok, but during that same time Paiutes and Miwoks were fighting. In other words no Miwoks could’ve gone to Paiute Mono Lake and lived there. He would’ve been killed. In our Paiute legends we have a place called Ahwahnee so how do they explain that. Also in Tenaya’s group he had people from Nevada and maybe some from Oregon. Yes Tenaya’s band was a camposite tribe, a camposite tribe of different Paiute groups. There is no such thing as Nevada and Oregon Miwoks, only Nevada and Oregon Paiutes.

R. Dandridge | Homepage | 01.11.08 – 6:16 pm | #Kathleen Hull says “Tenaya’s mother was Paiute but his father MAY HAVE BEEN Miwok.” Then she goes on to say “…there’s good reason to believe the Awahnichi were Miwok-speaking people based on the language and various other cultural traits.” May have been is not scientific. It is a guess. Dr. Lafayette H. Bunnell, who met Tenaya, wrote that Tenaya spoke a Paiute jargon, not Miwok. That the Mono Paiutes considered Tenaya to be one of their own and bragged about his WAR exploits. Now can Hull explain to me when or where did Tenaya speak Miwok? There has never been any account of Tenaya speaking Miwok, only speaking Paiute. Can Hull explain who Chief Tenaya was fighting that he would have “war exploits” for the Paiutes to brag about? Tenaya certainly wasn’t fighting the Monos and Paiutes, but there are recorded accounts of Mono Paiutes fighting Miwoks. So no Miwok man could’ve went to war-like Paiute Mono Lake and live in peace, that is a fantasy promoted by white people. Ahwahnee or Owahnee is also a place in Paiute legends. It was only written that the Miwoks were the scouts and guides for the white miners and militia. The Miwoks had signed the Fremont Treaty EVEN BEFORE The Mariposa Battalion went into Yosemite Valley. It was also written that the white militia could have never discovered Tenaya if not for the help of their Miwok scouts. So the Myth of the Yosemite Miwoks is just that…a myth. The Park also says that they cannot identify the photos yet the photos in question can be identified. The photos in question are titled “Piute” or are of KNOWN Paiute people. So why can’t the Park identify them if they are titled? What the park is doing is putting up a “Yosemite Miwok” story but using photos of known Paiute people. That is the true story here, not some fantasy of the Yosemite Miwoks. Plus the Park is also PAYING the Non-profit Southern Sierra Miwuks over 87,000 dollars to do ‘tasks’ around the park, but does not pay any other Indian group in the area. Why is that? They are not even a federally recognized tribe yet. It is a fact the non-profit Southern Sierra Miwuks are going for a nice big casino in the town of Dublin.
Jake Smith | Homepage | 01.11.08 – 2:10 am | #

One of our Paiute people contacted the Fresno Bee about the how Yosemite NPS signs and the new Yosemite Visitor center had the story of the Yosemite Miwoks, but used photos of mostly Paiutes. One of the major problems we Paiutes had was with the interpretive signs located at the Lower Yosemite Falls and the Visitor Center. The majority of the Paiute people used in the photos for the Miwok story in Yosemite are not in the Southern Sierra Miwuks. When the reporter finally talked to David Andrews he gave her governmental documentation proving what he was saying was true. The reporter even talked to other Paiutes. Yet when the story came out there was only David Andrews vs four people claiming that the early Yosemite Indians were Miwoks. Not one mention of the Paiutes used as Miwoks in the Visitor Center or the photos of Paiutes used at the sign at Lower Yosemite Falls. No quotes from the other Paiutes. The four who the Bee reporter quoted instead was the spokesman for Yosemite National Park. An anthropologist the Park uses, an man who writes books mentioning the Yosemite Indians as Miwoks and the ex-chairman of the American Indian Council of Mariposa aka the Southern Sierra Miwuks. So basically it was four against one. The story turned from the Paiutes being used incorrectly for Miwok history to 4 people claiming Yosemite was Miwok. You can see the problems we Paiutes have with the Visitor Center by hitting the website link. Scott Gediman claims that there is no proof that photos were of Paiutes, yet their own books and Yosemite Research Library state differently. Kathleen Hull ‘guesses’ that Ahwahnees were Miwoks and she says they spoke Miwok. But if you read Dr. Lafayette Bunnell’s book The Discovery of Yosemite there is no mention that they were Miwoks, but only Paiutes and Monos. The book does say that Tenaya spoke Paiute and that he was the discoverer of the Paiute colony of Ahwahnee. Here is another thing that is not mentioned during that time Paiutes and Miwoks were enemies so no Miwok man could’ve entered Mono Lake and lived in peace before contact. Ahwahnee is also part of our ancient legends. All early writers say that the Mono Paiutes bragged about Tenaya WAR EXPLOITS and claimed him as one of their own. Now explain this to me, WHO WAS TENAYA FIGHTING? It was clearly not the Monos and Paiutes who were in the east. So that would mean he was fighting Miwoks. Chief Bautista, the Miwok chief, even gave the name “Yosemite” to Chief Tenaya’s band. In their language that meant “The Killers” and he said that his people were afraid to enter the Yosemite Valley. The ex-chairman of the Southern Sierra Miwuks Bill Leonard says that the Southern Sierra Miwuks are a combination of Miwok, Paiutes and Yokuts, yet during early times before the white man the three groups were enemies with each other. All three groups are different. Plus today there are already Miwok and Paiute and Yokut tribes in the area. So why would they want to create a tribe of the three combined tribes? Why don’t they just join one of the three that they are from? Oh, because some of them are already enrolled in Yokut, Paiute and Miwoks tribes in the area. One question the reporter should’ve asked Bill Leonard was “Are you are Miwok?” Because Bill Leonard is a Yokut and not a Miwok. At least if they asked David Andrews if he was a Paiute, he would’ve responded “yes”.

another response:

In W. A. Chalfant’s book The Story of Inyo, Chalfant documents Harry Cromwell’s old Paiute creation story of Owahnee (Ahwahnee) a place in our legends that was destroyed and the people scattered. This is how Tenaya’s father and a small group of the Ahwahnee surivivors went to Mono Lake, a Paiute area. There they stayed with their brethren and Tenaya’s father married a Mono Lake Paiute woman. They had Chief Tenaya, and Tenaya grew up among his mother’s people. When he was old enough Tenaya married a Mono Lake Paiute woman and had children. THEN a medicine man advised Tenaya that it was safe to return to the mountains. Tenaya then took his family and about 200 to 300 Indians back into Yosemite Valley and created the PAIUTE colony of Ahwahnee. So this “guess” that they were Miwoks, is a bunch of bull. Miwoks and Paiutes were fighting during that time and Tenaya’s father would have never went to Paiute Mono Lake. If he was Miwok why didn’t he go to the other Miwok areas? When Tenaya was captured by the white military, led by Miwok scouts, it was documented that Tenaya spoke Paiute and had Nevada and Oregon Indians. There are no Nevada and Oregon Miwoks, only Nevada and Oregon Paiutes. It was also documented that the Mono Paiutes bragged about Tenaya’s WAR exploits. Now who was Tenaya and his band fighting if they had Mono Paiutes flanked to their left, Mono Indians below them. That would mean that their enemies were the Miwoks to the west of them. It is white people speaking to the Miwok scouts who got it all wrong. When we Indian people try to tell them that the Miwoks were not the original people of Yosemite, they just don’t GET IT, that is because they don’t know how Indian people think. Most of those people now claiming to be the original Yosemite Indians are in fact the descendents of the Miwoks scouts, guides and gold diggers for the whites and not the real Ahwahnees.

Paiutes are still getting a piece of coal in their stocking for Christmas this year from Yosemite National Park Service. It is same thing the Yosemite – Mono Lake Paiutes have been getting every year from Yosemite National Park, which is erasing them out of the park.

This story written by Kel Munger tells it like it is.

Hopefully the Paiutes will have a better New Year in 2008 and the Park will finally stop labeling them as Southern Sierra Miwuks, who btw are employees and former employees of the Park. This group, Southern Sierra Miwok aka the American Indian Council of Mariposa, is also going for federal recognition…something is rotten in Denmark, or should I say Yosemite National Park.

My relatives have told me stories of the encounters that the Paiute people had with the Big Foots or Sasquatch as they are sometimes called. In the Paiute language we have different names for them, one is Pahi-zoho. There were some with red hair, brown hair and black hair. The red headed ones were said to be the meanest.

They were not like the bears or Grizzlies that the Paiutes shared space with in the high sierra, but big hairy human like creatures that Paiute people were afraid of. The Big Foots and Indians always tried to keep away from each other, but sometimes during hard times the Big Foots would eat young Indian children who wandered away from the group. Once they tasted human flesh the Paiutes believed they would hunt humans.

Just before John C. Fremont had arrived there was a group of red headed Pahi-zohos or Big Foots living north of Pyramid Lake. This group had been carrying off the Paiutes’ children and eating them. They had been a scourge and a problem to the Paiute people around the area. So the Paiutes decide to get rid of them. The Paiutes found their cave and were hiding in the sagebrush, but the Pahi-zohos smelled the wind and got the scent of the Paiutes and the Pahi-zohos ran into the cave. The Paiutes swarmed the entrance of the cave and filled the entrance with sagebrush. They set the sagebrush on fire and heard the screams and grunts of the Pahi-zohos in the cave as they died. The fire was so intense it burned everything. After that the Paiutes did not have any problems with the red-head giant Big Foots or Sasqatches in the area.

One was a story told by my grandmother of her mother’s scary encounter while camping with a band of Paiutes at the base of Cooper Peak in Tuolumne County, California. There was a place in the area called Mogul-numa (Mokelnume) named after the big granite peaks in the Sierra, in the Paiute language Mogul-numa meant Granite People because we believed the granite spires were live beings. The old people believed they were benevolent beings who watched over the people. The Paiutes were on their usual trip to fish along the creeks and lakes in the area and it was during the summer time on a warm moon filled night. Some of the people were sleeping outside of their willow brush houses after a night of visiting and talking. Suddenly one of the older men told everyone to be quiet because something or someone was approaching. Everyone got really still and some huddled together thinking it might be a bear or some other nightly spirit. They heard a noise that was not like a bear, but a different type of sound. There was also a smell, a terrible horrible smell that my great-grandmother told her daughter that she remembered that she would never forget. She remember seeing one of the men stretching his neck and peering into a clearing and she saw his eyes get really big, as big as winnowing basket. He mumbled quietly “Pahi-zoho, pahi-zoho”. One of the old women started to use her spirit guide to scare the Big Foot away. She repeatedly spoke calling her spirit. There was something moving around, but suddenly it stopped for less than a minute, then it started to move away. One of the men told the old woman to keep calling her spirit guide to scare away the Big Foot. After awhile the noise stopped, but the children were now quietly crying and sobbing. Old man Yankee asked the man what he saw in the clearing, was it the Pahi-zoho or a bear? He said he clearly saw it, it was a Pahi-zoho in the moon light. He said the Pahi-zoho was rummaging around bent over where some of the Paiute children had left some fish bones. That it was not a bear, but a large hairy man like creature bent over picking up the bones. That he had hands and not paws like a bear. He said as he watched him and that when the old woman was summoning her spirit guide he looked up, turned in his head in different directions, smelled the air and then quickly ran into the brush. The sound of her praying or the prayer itself had scared the Big Foot away. That night no one slept, the children afraid of being carried away by the Pahi-zoho and the older people up to make sure he did not attack them. The next day the leader of the camp said it was time to move on and they continued on, but my great-grandmother never forgot that night of the Pahi-zoho visit on her camp.

Red Big Foot

In the other story my uncle had heard that a few of the Mono Lake Paiute girls were out gathering berries in Piute Meadows, which is located in northern Yosemite National Park. When suddenly one of the girls who was on the edge of the meadow by the trees was heard screaming. The girls ran over there as one of the girls went to call the men. There was no trace of her. She had vanished. The people believed that she was taken by a Grizzly bear or some spirit had captured her. At the camp the family cried and was inconsolable, but the people had to go on. The next day the people started up the hill to trek along the Sierra suddenly in rear was heard a screaming and yelling. It was the girl crying, upset and yelling nonsensical things. She was moving her hands wildly and pointing back to the wooded area. She told the people that as she was picking berries along the meadow by the edge of the forest when a Big Foot or Pahi-zoho had come out behind a tree and grabbed her. He was big, reddish and hairy and she screamed and screamed. He had carried her off and she thought for sure he was going to eat her, but instead he took her into the bushes and forced himself on her. She said he stunk so bad, that it was making her sick and it was extremely painful, that he didn’t talk but grunted all that time. She was too scared to look at him, but could see his reddish big hands and hairy legs and feet, that even his feet had hair on them. They didn’t look human. She said after awhile he just went to sleep, but still had her in his grip in his arms. That his arms were very large and she just laid there scared and thinking that after that he was going to kill her. That he snorted and snored loudly all night long and suddenly almost in the morning he completely lost his grip and she made a quick dash. She ran like she had never run before for she feared for her life. Now she was safe with her people and her family, but later on she started to show signs of pregnancy. The people stayed clear of her accept her friends and family. Nine months later she had a son, a big red headed baby boy who was very hairy. The people were scared at first and some of the men wanted to kill him, but the girl’s mother prevented them. Later the people accepted him into the group for he was a good hunter and he had uncanny natural abilities of sight and smell and was very strong. He married and his children came out more normal looking, but every now and then one of his descendents comes out hairy and with red hair. Many of his descendents are now scattered in many of the Paiute tribes in California and Nevada.